I arrived in Salt Lake City mostly intact Tuesday afternoon. After dinner with Jared Stein and Scott Leslie (where I sampled from the unexpectedly common seafood fare) and deep, dreamless sleep in an incredibly comfortable bed I had the pleasure of playing a small part in a full-day pre-conference workshop on Personal Learning Environments.
I felt it was a pretty successful effort, an assessment generally confirmed by informal feedbak, but also one much easier to come to since Jared did all the heavy lifting and I had the luxury of just piping up when I felt like I had something to add.
As usual, the fundamental quandary that arose—as it does any faculty development session of this type—is how to convey the intangibles that make the primary activities I characterize as part of the PLE (or whatever term you want… I’m not hung up on the terminology beyond it’s convenience when communicating)—collecting, connecting, reflecting, sharing—worthwhile at all.
I’ve long known that the most important, critical aspect of changing from predominantly lecture-based to participation-oriented teaching is accepting the need for—and eventually honing into habit—a number of personal changes in practice and work habits. What it’s taken me a long time to discover is that the motivations that seem natural to me (despite their being essentially matters of self-interest in either the short or long term), such as keeping up in my field, sacrificing some of my time to participate in a community of peers and colleagues, and continually attempting to reinvigorate and refresh my own interest in my discipline, aren’t naturally shared by everyone.
The conundrum is a classic chicken-and-egg scenario: it’s difficult to internalize the benefits without practice, but without understanding those benefits few people engage in the practice. Which leaves a choice between two methods that are equally broken. One way is to push practice without worrying too much about the “why”, a kind of “fake it until you make it” approach that I believe works, but depends heavily on a very willing and trusting participant. The alternative is to attempt to convey the necessarily abstract (at that point) ideas of network effects and the subtleties of participation, publication, etc. in a way powerful enough to stimulate and motivate their practice… which is a lot like trying to convey something about playing an instrument by listening to someone describe a good piece of music.
To this point, the former approach is probably the most promising, but that choice often feels akin to choosing the best of two blunt objects with which to bash in my own skull.
When you have a day or two or five, how do you convey what is needed for transformative approaches to “stick?” How do you avoid sights like this:
(to be fair, John was just sitting in, and with all the work he puts in to make TTIX happen, he really needed a nap)
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Chris, first: I can’t thank you enough for participating at TTIX this year, and for helping in this session. Your contributions were timely and astute, and I know the participants really enjoyed the insights that you and Scott provided.
The quandary is a prickly one as you suggest. I felt like if we did anything right, we accurately described the challenge of growing a PLE online, especially for newcomers, but in a way that made the challenge attractive and even exciting. We provided them with ample examples of real value that can be both discovered and cultivated through these tools–which really are nothing but for the connections. You especially did a nice job of simplifying some of the concepts and processes, and I know that comes from much thought and reflection, not just practice.
(I think that challenge is indicative of what some complain about being the very conservative nature of education, and can highlight frustrations some ed tech folks feel about slowness to adopt new practices or change. Of course this is just part of the battle.)
In retrospect, in 7 hours we didn’t cover a lot of technical material, but instead balanced the chicken and the egg–and pretty well. Indeed, I can’t think of a better way to implement positive changes in education than through the sort of personal, hands-on activity that we ran yesterday. Convince them of the power with personal examples; simplify the processes down to the basic concepts so the big picture is more digestble; then train them on the technical aspects well enough to imbue comfort that they might explore and build on their own.
Finally, I perceived that being live in the same room as the group really helped it stick; partially because actually having to interact with participants one-on-one provides instant formative feedback that can alter the direction of your training. And just having many people in the room builds a spontaneous community with a connected vibe that can persist beyond the workshop.
Speaking from a learners point of view concerning Wednesdays TTIX workshop, I thought it was fabulous. Three presenters gave an added touch students seldom get in a face-to-face setting. Add that to the fact that we were learning from three masters. Wow, is all I can say.
I especially appreciated hearing why we should develop our own social networks, not just how. I had never really thought about my network helping me when I have a question. I believe that one of the reasons people don’t like to get themselves out there is because they don’t want to look stupid. I guess I just needed permission from someone who knows, to ask for help. Thanks!